Tropical Atlantic Meeting / PIRATA 14

Introduction: After a successful meeting dedicated to Tropical Atlantic studies in the frame of AMMA, TACE/CLIVAR & PIRATA international programs, and organized as part of the 2nd international AMMA conference in Karlsruhe/Germany (November 27-30, 2007), the necessity to organize regularly such meetings appeared as an evidence. Such a need mainly results from the importance to establish more exchanges and collaborations between "observations" and "numerical models" communities, only way to improve numerical simulations and predictions at seasonal time scale over the Tropical Atlantic and surrounding countries.
The Toulouse "Tropical Atlantic" meeting has been commonly decided by TACE, PIRATA and AMMA scientific committees, and will be held on February 3-6, 2009, just after the PIRATA SSC/PRB yearly meeting, scheduled on February 2, 2009 at the same location.

Priorities: Improve our knowledge on the mechanisms of the climate variability and the seasonal climate prediction over the Tropical Atlantic and surrounding countries.

Set up design experiments to test optimal design of observing system to improve sea surface temperature predictions in the tropical Atlantic and demonstrate improved coupled prediction skill in the tropical Atlantic with enhanced observations.
Set up coordinated forced and coupled model inter-comparison experiments to investigate the main processes involved in tropical Atlantic model biases at various time scales. Compare these runs with available observations with emphasis on the upper ocean in the eastern equatorial Atlantic.

This meeting is dedicated to Pr Fritz Schott.